DE. FI. CIEN. CY evolved through exchanges between Ulrich Loock and Luc Tuymans around the work of Andrej Wróblewski, who died at the age of 30 in 1957. The conversation will investigate Tuymans's interest in the work of other artists, historical and contemporary, and in creating art based on reality.

Ulrich Loock is a lecturer, curator and critic who has studied the condition of the image in contemporary art. His use of the phrase “deficiency of images” alludes to his belief in the fundamental failure of images to adapt to reality. He suggests that the 20th century has produced real states of agony that as such defy the possibility of depiction. Tuymans has said: “Drawing rather suggests the limit of what is seen. For me it is important to be able to see that limit. The basic plan of the picture is thus revealed, and simultaneously the impossibility of the picture, its lack of reference. By means of the drawing one implies one’s own limits and what is more, one creates one’s own limits in the work itself. I may have a picture in my head, but that does not yet mean that I can translate it.”